“Oh, did I miss a week?” She says innocently. “I was hoping no one would notice!” I had a crazy busy week-and-change during the Easter/Passover holiday, and I just knew I wasn’t going to catch up enough to get the page out on time. So here it is at last, and if you don’t think about it too hard you can almost pretend I didn’t miss a Tuesday in there!

Some more scheduling hiccups I will warn you all about in advance: I’m temporarily losing my studio to some small renovations being done in the house in the middle of May, and I expect the disruption to go on for at least a week. After that I’ll have to reassemble my studio in a different part of the house before things get back to normal. Rather than stress out about getting the pages up through the craziness that will ensue, I will just take the week or so off.

And finally, a happy announcement: I will be at the Ottawa Comicon, May 8-10! Look for me at table #2616. I had a great time back in 2013, so I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone at this show again.

System failures follow every jump, both mechanical and now, apparently, human. The solution to both, when and if found, is probably the same. Why didn’t they suspect this before? Too busy putting out fires probably.

I wouldn’t be worried that it’s too dangerous to use, but that it’s too useful to let go despite that! FTL is a pretty big deal, and jumping between parallel universes is at least as important! A lot of people would think that’s worth a little risk…

But Fu, history has shown that technology that are truly revolutionary are usually too dangerous to use at first! Trains’ steam engines EXPLODE once in a while when trains were new. And then steam boilers, engines, and turbines was everywhere and got put into everything from houses to power plants to ships. And maybe SPACEships. How did you think Mal and company made their coffee down in the lab?

Given enough time, they’ll make it safer. This tech was only hypothetical until recently. It does work – sort of – as we’ve seen. So the basic theory may be sound. But the fact that they’ve been plagued with so many issues suggests that it may be more than just working out some kinks. Rather, they may need to redo their calculations and examine all their assumptions. They did not expect to end up on a parallel Earth, so it’s clear they don’t know exactly how it works or what’s going on.

I’m reminded of a recent arc in Quantum Vibe, where the heroine and her android friend try to create a transdimensional drive over the course of months. They kept sending out probes with their drive and it kept failing to do anything. They created several dozen probes – all failures – and were about to give up. But the heroine has an inspiration about a theory that mainstream science had debunked years ago. It turned out that maybe it wasn’t entirely bunk after all. And instead of a transdimensional drive they accidentally create an FTL teleportation drive instead.

My point: I think they need to examine all the data they’ve collected, refine their drive design, and send out a series of unmanned probes with the refinements before risking another trip like this in a manned vessel. There must be a reason why their energy systems overload. Is excess energy accidentally siphoned off of hyperspace or from the process of transition?

I’m always fond of interactions between Darvin and Fusella. I love their relationship as friends and once-attempted-lovers. It’s my observation that when people are friends, then try to form a couple, fail, but keep being friends, they are among the closest kind of friends that can be.

And Fusella’s last line might have been mean, if not for being addressed to a friend: she’s just being brutally honest.

I’m really happy that all the criticism shoved on Fusella in last page ‘s comments for jumping to conclusions are now put in perspective. Yes, she may be jumping, but what she’s jumping to is a working hypothesis, and she uses the momentum from the jump to inquire about evidence, and even to ask for falsification (which is the scientific method).

Frankly even if it has a chance to kill people every time the drive activates range less teleportation is so useful that it will still be developed. Both the civilian and military complex won’t be willing to allow anything eles.

I think Captain Mierter is on the right track. (Though, until the previous page I felt sure that her death had something to do with Miesti venom.) That said, I wouldn’t just have those crew members complaining of headaches interviewed. I’d give them all thorough medical exams, specifically looking at their cerebral arterial walls. (They have the equivalent to CAT scans or medical tricorders, right?)